Spotlight

Eliza Redux

In the spirit of art and science collaborations serving the realm of interactive theater, Eliza Redux is a telerobotic work where three robots server as online pseudo-psychoanalysts, offering 5-minute private sessions. Eliza Redux celebrates the phenomenon of Dr. Joseph Weizenbaum’s linguistic 1966 computer program ELIZA, developed at M.I.T., which allowed for text-based human conversation with a computer program as psychotherapist. The program applied pattern-matching rules to the human’s statements to figure out its replies. Each robot has its discipline, i.e. either Freudian, Lacanian and Jungian. Together they form the centerpiece of a global “therapeutic” control center. Eliza Redux was online for two years and installed at New York City College of Technology. Video here.